Fall 2016 Project Grant results

The Project Grant: Fall 2016 competition has approved 475 research grants, plus an additional 121 bridge grants, for a total investment of approximately $359 millionFootnote 1.

The 475 grants approved were awarded to 461 individual nominated principal investigators (14 NPIs were awarded two grants). Of the 475 grants, 108 were awarded to new/early career investigators, and 22 were awarded for Indigenous health research projects.

The average grant size/duration is approximately $729,467 over 4.4 years.

It is important to note that as a result of the decision to delay the Spring 2017 competition, an additional $100 million was invested in the Fall 2016 competition. This allowed the organization to fund a larger number of highly ranked projects.

Geographic distribution

Geographic distribution long description
Province  Applications submitted Applications funded
British Columbia 306 applications submitted (10.6%) 59 applications funded (12.4%)
Alberta 310 applications submitted (10.7%) 36 applications funded (7.6%)
Saskatchewan 33 applications submitted (1.1%) 4 applications funded (0.8%)
Manitoba 82 applications submitted (2.8%) 9 applications funded (1.9%)
Ontario  1094 applications submitted (37.9%) 206 applications funded (43.4%)
Quebec 944 applications submitted (32.7%) 148 applications funded (31.2%)
New Brunswick 13 applications submitted (0.5%) 0 application funded (0%)
Nova Scotia 74 applications submitted (2.6%) 9 applications funded (1.9%)
Prince Edward Island 1 applications submitted (0.0%) 0 application funded
Newfoundland and Labrador 27 applications submitted (0.9%) 4 application funded (0.8%)
Total 2884 applications submitted 475 applications funded

In total, applicants requested over $2.6B in funding to support their ideas.

View full list of Project Grant competition recipients

View full list of bridge grant recipients

Note: Since some of the applications were approved with the condition to meeting certain conditions, they will not appear in the detailed funding decisions database until and unless those conditions are met.

Additional details

Breakdown of competition results

Breakdown of competition results long description
Application breakdown Applications submitted Applications funded
New investigators 655 applications submitted (22.7%) 108 applications funded (22.7%)
Mid-career investigators 1,233 applications submitted (42.8%) 193 applications funded (40.6%)
Established investigators 986 applications submitted (34.2%) 172 applications funded (36.2%)
Integrated KT 514 applications submitted (17.8%) 82 applications funded (17.3%)
Women 975 applications submitted (33.8%) 162 applications funded (34.1%)
Indigenous health 38 applications submitted (1.3%) 22 applications funded (4.6%)
Submitted in French 63 applications submitted (2.2%) 5 applications funded (1.1%)
Pillar I – Biomedical research 1,929 applications submitted (66.9%) 324 applications funded (68.2%)
Pillar II – Clinical research 493 applications submitted (17.1%) 69 applications funded (14.5%)
Pillar III – Health systems / services research 233 applications submitted (8.1%) 43 applications funded (9.1%)
Pillar IV – Social / cultural / environmental / population health research 226 applications submitted (7.8%) 39 applications funded (8.2%)

Large grants awarded

In the Project Grant competition, CIHR limited the number of large grants (defined as being in the top 2% of total grant value) awarded. Limiting the number of large grants helped ensure the support of a greater number of research projects overall.

A total of 6 large grants were funded using a budget envelope of $18.5M. An additional 9 large grants were awarded a one-year bridge grant.

Early Career Investigators

As announced by CIHR President in April 2017, the success rate for Early Career Investigators (ECIs) was equalized. This means that the proportion of ECIs funded equals the proportion of ECI applicants to the competition.

The total number of fully funded projects for applicants in this career stage went from 92 (before equalization) to 108 (after equalization).

Indigenous Health Research

All Indigenous Health Research projects went through an iterative peer review process. Based on the recommendation of the Indigenous Health Research peer review cluster, 22 Indigenous health research projects were awarded funding, and an additional 12 projects were awarded one-year bridge grants.

Bridge grants

A total of 121 one-year bridge grants were awarded to applications below the funding cut-off. They include:

  • 9 fundable large grants (in the top 2% of average annual grant size)
  • 12 Indigenous Health Research grants
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